


Shine On

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [145]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Allusions to injury, Brothers, Family, Gen, Healthy Adult Conversations, Healthy Extremely Juvenile Conversations, Star Wars AU - Soft Wars, minor shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:47:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29696643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: Vaughn came to Torrent to learn from them.  Maybe they're picking up a thing or two from him.
Series: Soft Wars [145]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 31
Kudos: 199





	Shine On

“That’s insulting, I’m insulted,” Ahsoka giggles and Captain Rex gives them both a look that says he is extremely aware that isn’t anything close to an answer. Vaughn likes to think he’s been with Torrent long enough to know many of the different flavors of avoidance they’ll haul out in any situation. Ahsoka’s techniques are incredibly reminiscent of Jesse’s. Vaughn’s noticed that Jesse’s avoidance tactics only work on Captain Rex when Captain Rex feels like it.

“Ahsoka’s a Commander, you know,” Vaughn chirps with his starriest voice. Distraction, he thinks, and puts his chipperest boot forward. “She can give commands.”

“I’m a Commander you know,” she echoes promptly. “I can give commands.” She double finger-blasters.

Vaughn smiles starlight innocence.

Captain Rex blandly stares at them both. It’s not disapproval though, so Vaughn will take it. “When we get caught I’m blaming you.”

“You have got no faith at all Rexter, it’s very sad.”

“Really Captain, where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Burned,” Captain Rex deadpans. “In true Mandalorian fashion.” His face softens. “And it’s Rex, Vaughn.”

“Rex,” Vaughn repeats and he’s aware his face is nearly glowing. Ahsoka snickers in ways she thinks is entirely subtle. Vaughn ignores it the way he’s ignored all of her innuendo so far. He’s been a Captain for it feels like only a blink, and _Torrent’s Captain Rex_ is treating him like an _equal_. He’s allowed to be a little giddy.

“Tuck it in, vod,” she cackles and Vaughn ignores that too. Mostly. He does flick the end of her lekku and smiles vapidly at her hiss.

“Rexter, Vaughn’s being mean to me!”

“Rex I think Ahsoka’s procrastinated her paper on-”

“ _Ahahahaha_!” Ahsoka yelps. “Are we burning oxy here? I think we are!”

Her shoulder bends under his arm, the familiar track of trooper pauldrons hold him upright. His legs still shake, a little. He doesn’t try to stop them.

Vaughn’s learned a lot in Torrent, a lot more than he thought he would. And a lot of it is so much more important than weapons and tactics. One of the earliest lessons he’d found was Torrents don’t hide weaknesses, not from each other. They share them freely, and share their strengths just as easily. It’s never a coincidence where the latter overlaps to compensate for the former.

Ahsoka’s arms are steady under his, her grip firm in a way that foretells just how much more solid she can get with only a little more time. She takes most of his weight and doesn’t sway. Doesn’t call attention to it either because Torrent Vode are also incredibly kind.

“And also!” she chirps and that’s _Vaughn’s own tone_ of Convenient Distraction she’s picked up, because they’re learning from him just as much as he is. “Vaughn! _Captain_ Vaughn! Vaughn is Command you know. He gives commands. Authorizy commands.”

Rex’s shoulder slides under his and there’s nearly no weight at all to pull at still-distantly-pained muscles slowly fading from awareness under the wash of bacta. Vaughn’s breath of relief is thanks enough and both smile at him.

And yet Rex is not so easily distracted. Rex is quite aware of where _actual_ authority lies in this company. Vaughn’s learned that too. Quickly.

“I didn’t ask if this was authorized,” Rex protests as the two Torrents carefully hustle Vaughn past not-at-all-suspiciously unmanned reception desks and workspaces. No sir, nothing suspicious about this. “I asked if _Kix_ authorized this.”

“Sure!” Ahsoka beams.

“Nearly,” Vaughn lies.

“He is generally aware of the situation.”

“Authorization is pending but expected.”

Rex looks between them, sums up what he knows of them. “You bribed Anakin to distract him.”

“Slander and accusation Rexter. Skyguy would never stoop to such tactics.”

“General Skywalker will be getting authorization. It’s on the list of things he plans to discuss with Lt Kix today.”

Rex tries to go for a judgmental eyebrow. Vaughn radiates waves of contagious good spirit. “How far down the list?”

Vaughn and Ahsoka shrug, nearly in unison. Vaughn nearly topples with it and there’s some quick shuffling to get everyone back on balance. “I wouldn’t presume to know,” Ahsoka drawls loftily in that way stolen directly from Rex, that one voice that explains why Ghost Company keeps trying to invite the man to lose at sabacc. “They’ll probably take a while to even get to the list,” Ahsoka continues. “Since Kix likes Anakin best.”

And that in no way was the reason why the General was deployed for Kix-wrangling during this daring escape. No sir, not at all. Vaughn would _never_ be so underhanded.

“If we’ve managed to subvert you _this_ fast,” Rex mutters, “Bly is going to mock me forever.”

“I like to think I brought my own flavor to this endeavor,” Vaughn breezes. Rex snorts.

Cresh Shift is nearly completely deserted right before changeover. Everyone is off doing their final checks, filling out handoff forms. Slow and groggy from long hours in low light and cold space. They weren’t meant for that, Vaughn’s always thought, strange and impractical a thought though it is. Of course they were meant for this, they were designed for this. Still, Vaughn can’t help but think that Vode do best in sunlight. In open air and bright spaces, with tall trees and great stretches of water. A dream, maybe, but a pleasant one and one no one can make him outgrow.

Low lights hum to life as they pass, dim in deference to the human need for a photocyling environment. Sluggish too, almost reluctant as if even the wiring doesn’t want to be working this late. Ahsoka does the traditional Dance of the Motion Sensors at the D-08/18 intersection, to wake up that one notoriously finicky one three recesses down that would leave the hallway void black but for the glow of emergency panels.

“Can’t take a shower a _nanosecond_ longer than necessary,” she grouses, “without a soft shell up your skids. But fixing a busted light?”

“I suspect Engineering is deliberately leaving that one broken,” Rex points out. “Probably because you keep complaining about it.”

“I’m gonna put suspend Hardcase’s entire bucket in jello,” she threatens darkly. “ _Vanilla_ jello.”

“Hardcase?” Vaughn glances, askance. “Everyone knows it’s _Tup_ -”

“Hardcase lets Engineering get away with murder,” Ahsoka snips, without any concept of irony. “And besides, We Don’t Jello Tups,” she quotes morosely. “It’s the eyes. They’re like those adopt-orphan-puppy commercials that always come on at Feastmeals.”

And probably why, though Torrent troopers get away with anything, Tup can and does get away with more.

Rex chuckles, like he isn’t Enabler-In-Chief.

Vaughn doesn’t really need their support to walk. If all Ahsoka and Anakin had offered was a long, distracting conversation with Kix and one manufactured emergency that needed Coric’s attention, Vaughn would have managed just fine. If all Rex had done was decide not to ask, Vaughn would have made this work. He’d have been slow, much slower, and the faint aches that twinge down his legs he knows would have been a burn, but he’d have managed. Best way out is through, Star Corps say, and Vaughn will always be Star. “Just a moment, I need to grab that-”

“That sketchy-looking tool bag?” Rex intones. “The one not-at-all suspiciously loitering tucked behind this panel?”

Vaughn sparkles at him. Rex rolls his eyes but he really does have the worst sabacc face. Vaughn keeps adding proof of why Torrent troopers get away with everything. “Yes please!”

Ahsoka’s arm wraps firmly around his waist, and if she’s also using the Force she doesn’t admit it, but there’s nearly no weight on Vaughn’s knees. Rex shoulders the tool bag himself.

The entire GAR knows Torrent is fearless. Their kindness is less-often sung, but far more potent. Rex and Ahsoka bracket Vaughn as if he isn’t an interloper in their clan, and trail along with his plans without once asking for detail.

“They’ll fold you in,” Bly had warned, his fondness undeniable. “You don’t stay a stranger to Torrent for very long. Rex can’t help himself.”

“I’m sorry,” Ahsoka says nearly silently. “I’ll ask Barriss to teach me how to do pain relief.”

“It doesn’t really hurt much anymore,” Vaughn assures her. She taps her temple against his, like a squadmate. He taps the underside of his bracer against her pauldrons, like the same. Rex keeps a hand on Vaughn’s opposite elbow and holds him steady.

Once they get to the turbolift, they’ve escaped.

Not entirely, of course. If Lt. Galle taught Vaughn anything about medics, it was that they played the long game. Any victory against them was temporary at best. Vaughn will be repaying this little stunt a dozen times over he’s sure.

It’s worth it though.

Vaughn’s hand tightens briefly. More than worth it. Necessary.

“Alright?”

“Just fine Captain.”

“Rex,” Rex reminds.

“Rex.” Vaughn smiles.

Their lift takes them deep into the command center, where maps and plots cover every holotable and strategies historic and planned creep up the walls. Lt Jesse and Sgt Attie lean bowed-headed over topography in one far corner; in another a vod Vaughn doesn’t know in rumpled grays squints down at a crush of minuscule text scrolling by far faster than Vaughn would assume he could read any of it. None of them pay them any mind.

His target is the furthest room off the main hall, on the other side of card-coded door Vaughn only just barely has the clearance for. He doesn’t swipe in. He knocks.

Finally, there’s surprise from his self-declared assistants. _This_ is where they show even the barest indication of finding anything of this out of the ordinary. These vode, really… Vaughn has to laugh, sometimes.

“Uh. Vaughn?” Ahsoka shifts. “Are you-”

“I’ve got a plan,” Vaughn assures and pretends he doesn’t hear Rex huff amused at the imitation. “Still have that stock market paper to do?”

She blinks both sets of her eyelids in succession. “Yes?”

The door slides open.

“It’s Captain Vaughn, isn’t it?”

Vaughn beams. He straightens so it doesn’t look quite so much like Ahsoka is keeping him upright. “Yessir, General,” he chirps. “Here for that tech support ticket we talked about earlier.”

General Mundi is taller than Vaughn expected. Even ever so slightly stooped, he’s half a head above Vaughn himself. And he’s old, almost unimaginably old to Vaughn’s eyes. He finds himself again adjusting his image of Jedi.

There’s just no _uniformity_ to them. Vaughn’s had a hard time wrapping his mind around it all.

“Yes,” the General muses. “The tech support.” There’s something about him that’s a little soft, in a face that doesn’t seem to remember how to be any more. He certainly looks far less tired than when they spoke this morning. “I’m afraid it’s quite broken. I’m sure it will take you some time.”

“I’ll get it back up as fast as possible,” Vaughn rebuts. He can get away with small things, maybe. Might be able to steal minutes here or there, but he won’t try for more than that. Won’t risk it. He knows to make do.

General Mundi claps him on the shoulder. He smiles, and Vaughn doesn’t think he’s imagining it a little sad. “I’m very proud of you, young man,” the General says. “I can only hope others of your fellows are able to follow your example.”

Vaughn doesn’t understand. But he knows enough to fake it, to smile and nod and pretend to agree with whatever it is that just happened. He doesn’t know how well he does.

“Uh, Master Mundi?” Ahsoka breaks in, before the silence can stretch too terribly awkward. Vaughn is keenly aware of Rex’s utter stillness at his right. “If you’re not busy? I’m doing research on financial crises…”

The Jedi sweep in one direction. Vaughn totters the other, for a step until Rex remembers to move and catches him by the elbow.

The Classified Holocomunicator Room door closes behind them. General Mundi’s authorization chit sits, glittering forbidden, neatly on the rim of the perfectly functional ClassComm. The locks engage; the all-clear lights above the door flip green. A link to any Republic detachment in the war waits for a destination code.

“I don’t understand.”

Captain Rex, he. He looks confused. More than confused. Almost on the way to lost. The toolbag Vaughn thought would make a good prop but doesn’t actually need sits abandoned at his feet.

Vaughn understands, a little. He pretends he doesn’t.

That way is just so much easier, sometimes.

“General Secura always told us that most Jedi can’t read minds,” he says instead. He wields cheer like blasters, dons it like armor. “And the ones that _can_ , generally don’t.” He laughs quietly. “It isn’t polite,” he says, like it’s a secret.

Rex’s confusion doesn’t clear. Vaughn hurts a little, for him. No one knows everything, about Captain Rex and Commander Bacara. But everyone knows a little bit of something. And a lot of the rest isn’t hard to guess.

Vaughn knows a little what it means to have someone important on the other side of a comms blackout. It’s why he’s here.

“And after our last sortie. When.”

When Vaughn’s transport was gunned down almost immediately after they cleared atmo. When there was smoke and shots and shouts, and for a long, long while Vaughn didn’t know what had pinned him or which way was up.

When all they broadcast out After is numbers, casualties. When there’s someone on the other side who doesn’t know that a couple of rounds of bacta therapy have both his legs working pretty much okay and barely even hurting anymore.

“I figured. If Jedi couldn’t read minds, maybe he just _didn’t know_ how important it was to me that I get word to the Forward Companies. So.” He shrugs with a casualness he doesn’t really feel. “I asked.”

Rex smiles, a little, and it looks a little like it hurts. “You asked.”

“I asked.” Vaughn shrugs again. “It turns out General Mundi is a little bit of a romantic? He misses his wives, and his family, and maybe he projects a little. I barely had to say anything before he agreed to… this.” There are petabytes of regulation on comms access. Links past the blockade are guarded fiercely from within and without. Careless Comms Crash Cruisers, after all, and lose wars beyond that. But Vaughn had only just started to let some of his longing, just a tinge of his desperation, shine through, before General Mundi had agreed to let him come _troubleshoot_ the classified holocom.

“I just. Asked.” Vaughn watches Rex from the very corners of his eyes, while his fingers tap in the chains of codes he’s memorized. “Captain. Rex. You could-”

“Vaughn,” is all Rex says, and Vaughn understands and wants to pretend he doesn’t. Whatever Rex has with Commander Bacara, it isn’t Rex’s alone to speak of. Not even to the one person who could maybe help them.

Not even if just _talking_ to _just_ _one person_ , if having a conversation to make General Mundi understand, could make everything so much easier.

It’s not Rex’s call alone to make. And it isn’t Vaughn’s business to pry.

“I appreciate it,” Rex says softer and Vaughn didn’t even know he was afraid Rex would hold it against him somehow, until it’s clear he doesn’t.

The connection validates. It awaits the authorization code. “I can-” Vaughn will only have a few minutes before he’d risk someone getting curious, audit the connection. He could sacrifice some of those minutes, try to connect to Boz Pity’s Western Front, where Commander Bacara was last said to be. He could do that first.

Rex brings their foreheads together into a gentle Keldabe and doesn’t let him.

“I appreciate it,” he repeats. “But don’t throw away what you’ve managed to scrape, not for a couple of stubborn curmudgeons.”

Vaughn giggles, sadly. “You’re only barely curmudgeonly,” he says, but leaves ‘stubborn’ to stand. Rex taps forehead to forehead.

“We definitely didn’t teach you that,” he teases. Vaughn grins back.

“I brought many things to this partnership.”

The Captain snorts. One last tap before he pulls away. “Make your call,” he orders. “Yell when you’re done, and I’ll help you sneak back before Kix notices.”

“They never talk about how optimistic Torrent is,” Vaughn chirps. It’s good to see a real laugh.

Locks disengage, the Room-Unsecured-Comms-Barred light flips red until Rex has left and everything clacks back into place behind him.

Vaughn punches in borrowed authorization and waits long, long seconds for the connection to load.

‘ _You asshole.’_

Face too close to the projector, screwed up and red from worry and probably crying. Glare that’s always been able to make Vaughn do anything at all.

He’s alright. He looks _good_ , all grown-up and professional in elite Marine colors. Vaughn can’t help but smile.

“Hey Boss’ika.”

‘ _You horrible awful asshole,_ ’ Bossi wails. _‘Are you okay? You asshole I hope every cuisse you put on forever chafes and you can't scratch you asshole. Are you okay?’_

“I’m okay,” Vaughn promises. “I’m okay, I’m okay. Don’t cry, Boss’ika, I’m here. I’m okay.”

‘ _Kark you, you_ _lukewarm tube sludge,’_ Bossi snaps and yeah, he’s crying. _‘I karking hate you, you kriffing … ugh kriffer kriffing kirffing **jagyc’kovid** _1 _I hate you. I was so scared.’_

“I’m fine, good as new-”

‘ _ **Nar’sheb **_2 _! Shut up I’m yelling at you_.’

Vaughn curls into the chair and thrills at every single one of his baby brother’s insults.

“Big words from a tiny vod who ran off to join the Marines,” he teases, just to watch Boss’ika redden like a plumberry and puff up like a bellowfish.

‘ _Shut up_ _I get to be_ _mad_ _first._ _And you are gonna be younger_ _forever_ _now._ _You void-brained drinking straw._ _’_

They’re okay. Vaughn will heal, good as new ( _or else_ , Kix has said, disconcertingly bland). Bossi’s found himself a place and purpose and through it didn’t lose any bit of his fire.

For the ten minutes they have, they prod and insult and yell and, maybe, cry a little bit. Because they’re both alive and both relieved and for ten minutes it’s enough to pretend that there’s nothing that separates them.

“‘Drinking straw’!? I don’t even know _why_ but I definitely think I’ve just been insulted.”

‘ _Then you better get ready for the shocker the_ _rest_ _of what I gotta say_ _will_ _be you ringing bucket.’_

“Tubling.”

_** 'Shebs'palon.  ** _ 3 _ Waxed _ _.’_

“I swear if the Marines have corrupted you _already_ _ ** mirsheb'ika **_1…”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Dickhead. Back  
> 2\. Shove it up your ass. Back  
> 3\. Asshole. Back  
> 4\. Little Smartass (Fond(?)). Back  
> 


End file.
